> A long-ago colleague once referred to this type of engineer as a “plodder”: they aren’t particularly fast, but they’ll make steady progress on a normal-diffic

> A long-ago colleague once referred to this type of engineer as a “plodder”: they aren’t particularly fast, but they’ll make steady progress on a normal-difficulty engineering task. I now think “plodder” is an unnecessarily pejorative name for this, because the more experience I get the more I love these colleagues. They help. They do the work. They’re just not burning with ambition to excel at the next promo cycle, or to blow their peers away with really impressive output. Probably they have other things going on in their lives! I'd like to propose "tortoise", as in the fable "the tortoise and the hare" - not fast, but very reliable and will finish normal tasks. So then a hare would talk/present themselves well but doesn't get much done (the post's weak seniors?). These also combine nicely with that acronym that recently got popular, GOAT (greatest-of-all-time) - the best who do the unexpected, like walk on walls.